The rise in working people claiming housing benefit will cost £12.9 billion, equivalent to £488 for every British household, between 2010/11 and 2018/19, Labour is about to claim.

Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary, Rachel Reeves, will
say today that the number of working people relying on housing
benefit is set to double between 2010/11 and 2018/19. She will
argue that low wages and job insecurity are forcing more working
people to rely on housing benefit.

Ms Reeves will announce that the number of workers claiming
housing benefit “to make ends meet” will continue to
rise if a Conservative government is elected next year.

According to the shadow secretary, the “number of working
people claiming housing benefit is set to double because the Tory
government has failed to tackle low pay, insecure work and the
cost-of-living crisis. That's meant thousands more people have
been forced to rely on housing benefit to make ends meet.”

In her speech, to be delivered in West Yorkshire as one of a
series in Labour’s summer “The Choice” campaign in the
run-up to next year’s general election, Reeves will promise that
“Labour will raise the minimum wage, introduce living wage
contracts and get 200,000 homes built a year by 2020 to tackle
the housing benefit bill and ensure working people can make ends
meet.”

British taxpayers are set to pay £10.8 billion a year in state
support to private landlords by 2018. Housing benefit makes up
about 14 percent of welfare spending.

According to House of Commons statistics, 478,000 people with
jobs claimed housing benefit in 2009/10, rising to an expected
962,000 this year and to around 1.23 million in 2018-19. The
official figures also underline Britain’s acute shortage of
low-cost housing.

He said: “We’ve capped benefits so no family can claim more
than the average family gets by going out to work and we’ve put
an end to unlimited housing benefit. This is all part of our
long-term economic plan to build a welfare system that provides a
safety net for those in need, while rewarding the willingness to
work.

“But Labour haven’t learnt their lesson. They voted against
our housing benefit cap, they voted against our overall cap on
benefits and they still plan to borrow and spend more by
restoring the spare room subsidy, landing future generations with
more debt than they can ever hope to repay.”